The Woodstock Film Festival is set to announce the unveiling of its official 2014 poster at a reception on Friday, August 8 from 5-9pm at THE FILM CENTER, 13 Rock City Road, Woodstock, NY. The unveiling will take place at 7pm. This event will be part of "Woodstock Nights" where various businesses around town will be hosting events and offers the second Friday of each month through October. The event is free and open to the public.

JOIN US on August 8 from 5pm-9pm. The the unveiling taking place at 7pm. You will see our fabulous new poster design, meet the artist and enjoy light snacks and refreshments. Brand new merchandise featuring the artwork will also be available.

This will be the first step on the journey to the Woodstock Film Festival 15th Anniversary extravaganza.

VISIONS OF MARY FRANK SPECIAL SCREENING

The Woodstock Film Festival and the Elena Zang Gallery will be co-presenting a special screening of John Cohen's documentary, Visions of Mary Frank.

August 31, 2:30pm, Upstate Films Woodstock
Followed by a Q&A with John Cohen and Mary Frank.

When Mary Frank began her artwork in the 1950s, she was known in the New York City arts community as a beautiful, young woman. Photographed by Walker Evans, Edward Steichen, Ralph Gibson and her then-husband Robert Frank, the pictures captured their vision of her. They did not present her as an artist. Filmmaker John Cohen has known Frank and her work for over 50 years. This new film is a window into her vision. Her work is in nearly every major American museum. Her explorations take form in drawings, triptychs, paintings, prints, photographs and sculpture. In clay, magnificent female figures emerge from the earth, evoking mythic gods and human frailties.

You can make a difference.
By contributing your time and abilities as a member of the volunteer crew,
you play an integral role in making our annual festival program a reality.
We are proud to be able to promote artists, culture, inspired learning,
and diversity and we couldn’t do it without you.

It’s fun!
As a member of our volunteer crew, you will experience the magic of the festival with some great insider insight.

We show our appreciation.
Volunteers receive a festival badge, 2014 crew member t-shirt,
special training, and vouchers to see films.

Hudson Valley Programmers Group SUMMER SCREENING SERIES.There are four films left to screen in this summer's HVPG Screening Series. The Forgotten Kingdom, The Great Chicken Wing Hunt, Twist and To Be Forever Wild each will still screen this month. For complete details visit HVPG.org

The Hudson Valley Programmers Group administers a year round touring exhibit that features films by established and emerging filmmakers, with an emphasis on giving filmmakers an opportunity to exhibit their work and interact with the community.

Atang Mokoenya leaves the slums of Johannesburg to return to his ancestral land of Lesotho, where he must bury his estranged father in the remote, mountainous village where he was born. Stirred by memories of his youth, he falls in love with his childhood friend, Dineo, now a radiant young school teacher. Through her, Atang is drawn toward the mystical beauty and hardships of the people and land he had forgotten, and faces his own bittersweet reckoning.

Chicken wings have become a staple of the American culinary experience, but filmmaker, journalist and upstate New Yorker Matt Reynolds takes finding the best wing to an entirely new level.

Abandoning his successful career as an overseas reporter Matt returns to the States to embark on a journey across New York State to find the world's best chicken wing accompanied by his confused Czech girlfriend, Lucie. In an odyssey covering over 2500 miles, Matt and his cabal of chicken wing obsessed friends consume nearly 300 varieties of wings in two weeks. Eventually Matt must decide what is greater: his love for wings or Lucie.

The Great Chicken Wing Hunt is more than a foodie’s delight; it’s three parts gastronomic competition, two parts oddball comedy and one part love story.

Combining rare and often hilarious archival footage with interviews, Twist chronicles the evolution of rock and roll dance.

From the time when moving hips marked you as a social degenerate, to a time when shaking your "thing" became the dance-form that rocked the world.
•Thursday, August 7, 8:00pm at Mountain View Studio, Woodstock
Q&A w/director Ron Mann follows

To Be Forever Wild is an hour long documentary film created by a group of filmmakers, musicians and artists in the Catskill Mountains. Based in a small red cabin perched above a waterfall, the crew spent several weeks exploring the landscapes that are considered to be America's "first wilderness."

Director David Becker, crew members, and subjects of the film will be in attendance. To Be Forever Wild will premiere on PBS and will be released on DVD this August. The film profiles the people who live in and visit this region, including artists, hikers, scientists, farmers and young people.

Enjoy a day of Indian dance, music, film, and food right. The fruit of The Vanaver Caravan’s widely acclaimed partnership with NGO Udaipur Shakti Works, begun in India in 2012, this initiative is known as Shakti Caravan. A combined effort, Shakti Caravan, is a traveling dance exchange program which creates immersive, meaningful cultural events for local communities, internationally.

Shakti Caravan will host two back-to-back events on Main Street Rosendale to welcome award-winning Indian dancers, Bharat Verma and Kishan Lal Gameti, to New York. Both dancers are founding members of the Caravan in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India, and have come to continue the inspiring community outreach developed this year in India.

Space is limited. To pre-register for this unique event call 845-256-9300 or email vcoffice@vanavercaravan.org.

Directed by Pema
Tseden.
(2013, 98 mins, Tibetan and Mandarin with English subtitles.)

The Tibetan Center will screen the dramatic feature debut of the now widely-regarded leading filmmaker of a newly
emerging Tibetan cinema, The Silent Holy Stones was filmed on location in Pema
Tseden’s home town in Amdo, Tibet. A seven-year-old Living Buddha (tulku), coming home from his monastery for the holidays, becomes enraptured with TV serials of
Buddhist stories, and tries to bring them back to his fellow monks.

“His ability to speak eloquently of individual despair and the emergency of cultural
obliteration is masterful; his ability to do this in films of such eloquent, quiet beauty is
!nothing short of astonishing.”—Cinema Scope

In August and September, Upstate Films will be bringing you a special series of films:Martin Scorsese presents Masterpieces of Polish Cinema

The first film up is Andrzej Wajda's ASHES AND DIAMONDSSun Aug 10 Rhinebeck/Sun Aug 17 Woodstock

Ashes and Diamonds is set on the last day of World War II and the first day of peace. And between them, a night that changes everything.

Seen through the eyes of Maciek, a young Polish resistance soldier, the old is rapidly mixing with the new. In a few hours dawn will end the Nazi slavery of the country, but also will bring a new communist regime to Poland. This is not the independence the idealistic young man and his brothers in arms have been fighting and dying for. Should Maciek continue his combat when he wants so badly to live a normal, peaceful life? An iconic portrait of the dilemma of a whole generation in Poland, rooted in the literary tradition of great, tragic dramas of romanticism.

The other films in the series screening in August are Eroica (August 16/24), INNOCENT SORCERERS (August 27/30) and Night Train (August 31). Please see Upstatefilms.org for full details.

The locally filmed About Alex, starring Max Greenfield (@iamgreenfield) (New Girl) and Jason Ritter (@jasonritter) will make it's theatrical debut in a limited release on August 8. Filmmaker Jesse Zwick writes and directs his feature debut.

A circle of twenty-something friends reunite for a weekend away after one of them suffers an emotional breakdown. Despite the group's best efforts to keep it light and enjoy themselves, a tinderbox of old jealousies, unrequited love, and widening political differences leads to an explosion that, coupled with the flammable combination of drugs, wine, and risotto, cannot be contained. An honest appraisal of adult friendship for our current social media moment, About Alex is a lighthearted look at the struggles of a generation that has it all - and wants more.

Jamie Marks Is DeadAugust 29
Directed by Carter Smith

Another locally filmed picture will be hitting theaters in August. Jamie Marks is dead premiered at Sundance and features Liv Tyler and Judy Greer.

In a small town, the body of a teenager named Jamie Marks (Noah Silver) is found by the river. Adam (Cameron Monaghan), the star of his cross-country team, becomes fascinated with Jamie- a boy nobody really knew or interacted with, except occasionally to bully him. When Jamie's ghost begins to appear both to Adam and Gracie (Morgan Saylor), the classmate who discovered the body, Adam is caught between two worlds. He has a budding romance with Gracie, but he also feels a deep connection to Jamie, who brings him closer to the world of the undead.

The Cold Lands made its Woodstock Film Festival debut at the 2013 festival. It will now drop on DVD on August 12. The film stars Lili Taylor.

When his fiercely self-reliant mother dies unexpectedly, eleven year-old Atticus is wary of the authorities and flees deep into the forests surrounding his Catskills home. Wandering the woods in shock, relying on what meager food and shelter he comes across, Atticus' grasp on reality begins to fray. His sheltered, off-the-grid childhood dissolves into a directionless life on the move, avoiding other people while trying to differentiate between reality and fantasy.

2011 WFF Official Selection Coming Up Roses is now available on Netflix both DVD and for streaming. Add it to your queue now!

Bernadette Peters is transfixing as the domineering Diane, a woman with enormous problems and a titanic personality to match. She shuttles her teenage daughter Alice, in a terrific performance by Rachel Brosnahan (House of Cards) (@rachiebros), across small-town America, confronting bad neighborhoods, money woes, failed love affairs and depression. Larger-than-life Diane pins her hopes on wrong man after wrong man, until one promising suitor enters her life. But is this really their salvation? A disturbing yet tender portrait of a theatrical mother and her impressionable daughter as they desperately cling to shreds of hope and dreams of a better life. A story about the power of imagination and the menacing reality of insatiable need.

Lisa Gossels's My So-Called Enemy, (2010 WFF) will continue free streaming run through August 25 on PBS online. The film is even more timely considering the ongoing crisis in Gaza.

If all your life you’ve been told THEY are the enemy, THEY are the ones you should fear, what happens when that very notion is challenged? The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has raged for the last 62 years and recent events have generated dangerous new levels of friction. Director Lisa Gossels’ documentary feature "My So-Called Enemy" touches on a brave new front for peace: young women. In 2002, 22 Palestinian and Israeli teen girls visited the U.S. as part of the Building Bridges for Peace program. 'My So-Called Enemy' is a coming of age story about six of the program participants and how their experience of knowing their 'enemies' as human beings meets the realities of their lives back home in the Middle East. What unfolds is an emotionally charged film about the human consequences of all conflicts — as seen through the eyes of six young women who are thoughtful, intelligent and articulate beyond their years. Idealized world views and friendships become much more complicated as the everyday realities of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict continue to haunt their lives. Gossels captures the maturation of each woman and the diverse set of circumstances each must face as they enter adulthood, revealing an emotionally charged film about conflict, camaraderie and ultimately…hope. -Michael Burke (@colonelnp)

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